


Animal Living In A Human Zoo

by doctor_jasley, gala_apples



Series: S. K. Anon [3]
Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Disembowelment, Gen, suicide by cop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_jasley/pseuds/doctor_jasley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most killers make mistakes. This tends to be bad for them, good for society.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Animal Living In A Human Zoo

**Author's Note:**

> Title from If You Want Blood by ACDC.

Ryland picks up around the living room. He’s not being meticulous. He doesn’t really give a shit about the thin sheen of dust coating the top of the tv or the Outside magazine sitting crumpled up on the edge of the side table shoved up against the window near his front door. The magazine’s a couple of months old but it has an article in the true life events section -or whatever hell the portion of the magazine is that talks about personal experiences with the wild- about wolves attacking children and eating them alive. Using their canines and claws to rip their victims to shreds before dragging what’s left off of the carcass back with them to their home.

Most people think about wild animal maulings and deaths in this context of blood splattered grass with bits of flesh speckling the ground like huge flecks of pepper sprinkled over a salad. The truth is, a lot of the time animals like wolves or great cats -panthers, tigers, jaguars- tend to leave very little of their kills around. A person might find a discarded shoe or several buttons. Unless they stumble upon the den, it’s rare anyone will ever find the bones of whoever was dragged away while they died of shock and massive body trauma.

Perhaps he shouldn’t be thinking about wolves hunting their prey at the moment. Ryland can’t help it though. In many ways, he’s in the process of doing the same thing. The internet is a helpful partner in crime and he’s gotten friendly with people online. People who don’t fret about meeting up with a stranger to just hang out. It’s not hard to seem normal at a mall or pizza place. Hell, in many ways, he really is just a normal guy, if he doesn’t mention his love of dissecting animals...and people.

If he’s lucky this evening, today’s meet up will go well and by dinner time he’ll have someone stretched out across his sturdy, massive dining room table. All he has to do is convince the other person that they want to come over to watch movies or play video games with him. Let them leave their cars where they met up- always a parking lot without cameras or security roaming the place each hour to keep watch- so they can ride with him back to his place.

Unlike the animals in the wild, Ryland can’t just take what he wants right in front of a crowd of others in broad daylight. He has to have more tact than that. Yes, it would be fucking awesome if he could just walk up to a particularly enticing person with his sharpest knife out so he could claim them right then and there. However, he can’t do that, the world is too ‘evolved’ for that. So he has to hunt differently. Prowl the net for those who would never think to tell others where they’re going or exactly who they’re going to visit when they leave for the day.

Once he’s done cleaning up, his phone beeps a message. It’s from his newest _friend_. They’ve met up twice already and Ryland’s sure this time his prey is feeling safe enough to visit him at his house. When he reads the text, a smile spreads across his face. All he has to do is go pick up the other and he can start the ball rolling.

Hours pass and eventually the low levels of chemical in his playmate’s drinks start to take full effect. The guy slumps against the cushions of the couch. Ryland slowly slips the game controller out of the other’s hands and cuts off the console. It doesn’t take much work to drag the other guy into the tiny dining room slash kitchen. The massive oak table dominates the whole left side of the room, while the kitchenette claims the right. The tiles are easy to clean with bleach so there’s not an inch of plastic covering anything. What’s the use of having something else to throw out when he can do the best clean up this way?

The ropes wrapped around the legs of the table come up and the loops at each end cinch around the guy’s wrists and ankles. Ryland slips off the guy’s socks and shoes, dropping them into a cardboard box with one other pair of socks and Converse. When he has another combination he’ll hand wash the socks, let them dry and then donate the box to one of the many Goodwills or thrift stores that populate the city. None of the other clothing will make it through the night intact enough to be given away for someone else’s use. 

Once he’s checked the rope around the guy’s wrists twice - getting punched by a tiny slip of a chick because he didn’t double check the loops is so not something he wants to happen again - it’s time to pull out his cloth shears and his knives. He’d rather not make messy cuts through the clothing. The last thing he wants is cloth fiber sticking in his pretty slashes and lines of beautifully accented red that will appear when he finally pulls his knives out.

He could always use a boning knife or a filleting knife, but this time Ryland wants something softer. He has a scalpel or two laying about in his utility drawer and dragging one of them out feels right at the moment. He’s higher up on the ladder than the wolves and the lions. He can do something they can’t. His kills can be pristine, when theirs can not, all torn edges and ripped flesh flapping in the breeze as the body is being moved.

The first cut is across the lower stomach, the moment he has the guy’s shirt sliced through the middle horizontally and pulled back like the flaps of an opened box. A vivid line of red appears under his hand. He stares at it and the fingers of his left hand twitch with the want to touch and tug at the skin, just rip right past any resistance so he can caress smooth intestines with his finger tips. 

There’s the small sound of creaking in the background, but he doesn’t listen to it. The house is always settling at unusual times. He can’t, _won’t_ , stop now anyways. The second cut slides across the other side of the guy’s unprotected stomach and meets with the first with a slick pop as the last of the skin parts. Suddenly the guy under him shakes and a bitten off scream fills his ears. It’s not quite the howl of a smaller, weaker animal, but it will be the closest he can ever get.

Suddenly he feels an urge to change the order of cut. It would be more interesting to make an intersecting line from his prey’s chest down to the perfect cut across the guy’s stomach. He gives in; nights like these are entirely for fulfilling the needs of his baser nature. Every instinct should be followed. He turns to get a thicker blade from the drawer. It’s gorgeous, the boning knife is one of his best tools. It’s not one of the common models and the blade is thicker than usual but still slight enough to get it’s job done properly. The silver of the blade glints happily at him when he twists the handle in his hand, admiring his baby.

When he turns back, slowly spinning the handle of the knife between his palms like a rope of dough, a sense kicks up, the same feeling that makes a dog’s hackles rise. Something is wrong. He barely has enough time to notice his prey’s freed feet before they’re kicking out like a donkey. They strike him hard enough that he stumbles back, ramming the back of his head against the handle of the fridge. His vision goes sparkling red for moment, then black. 

He comes back to his senses a moment later, but it’s too late. The guy is gone, and the side door is open. “Fuck fuck damn!”

Ryland sprints outside. He can’t have gotten that far. The back yard gate is rusty as fuck and has a weird locking mechanism -probably because he bought the house from a family with three kids- there’s a chance he hasn’t even been able to open it with only moonlight to guide him. And even if he has, he can only be so far down the back lane. His legs are longer, he can catch up.

Sure enough, he’s given up on the gate. Instead he’s trying to scale the fence, smearing the blood dripping from his belly all over the whitewashed wood, screaming all the while. Fucking attention whores humans are. Dying animals never bitch out like this. Ryland tackles him into the fence, an anguished moan escaping as his wound smashes into the wood. It takes five or six tries before he cracks the hilt of the boning knife at the right angle against his temple and he passes out. He winces at the necessary thudding. It’s a sound for the likes of Cash or Gabe, not himself. 

With his prey passed out -or brain dead, it doesn’t matter at this point- on the grass, it’s far easier to slice deep into him. There’s just something about human organs that will never stop being astonishing. Even in the moonlight there’s a distinct difference between his pale hands and the burnt red shade of his prey’s large intestine. The contrast is beautiful, and not for the first time he wishes he had someone to photograph it. Trying to take a shot with his right hand, left hand in the meat never works out, one handed photography is always blurry.

“Put the knife down and back away from the body.”

“I don’t have the knife,” he answers without turning around. He doesn’t need it yet, he still has to examine the organs before he begins to cut them out. It would be silly to be holding the knife right now.

“Back away from the body with your hands on your head.” The voice sounds firm, and he can only assume it’s a cop. His stupid, nosy neighbour probably called 911 to report the screaming. She’s always complaining about something. If it’s not Cash driving him around at three am, revving the engine, it’s that his house smells bad.

“It’s already dead. You can’t save it. Just let me finish using it.”

“Away from the body! Hands on your head!” He’s screaming now, and still Ryland doesn’t bother to do either. What would be the point? Even if he was able to create a shiv in prison, he would never have the time to examine his prey. Better that this ends now.


End file.
